Her name sounds strange on his lips.
Guilt almost has me rubbing a hand over my heart. I promised Byrdie I would keep her name secret. That I wouldn’t tell a soul. I broke my promise.
“Having second thoughts?” Nash asks quietly, approaching and stopping on my right.
“Not about this.” I turn around and continue toward the fence.
After studying it for a beat, I grab the top and pull myself over it, dropping lightly on the other side.
I hear Makhi quietly curse, and the fence rattle. I shake my head at his failure to get over the top. He loves nothing more than to mock me for going into the army, but it taught me skills I wouldn’t have otherwise.
After tucking myself behind a rock as footsteps approach, I wait in the late afternoon darkness as, on the other side of the fence, Nash and Makhi fall silent.
The guards were the reason I’m positive this was the right place. A compound with men carrying rifles and wearing khaki combat-style clothes walking the perimeter of the fence had set off alarms. The one woman we’d seen had been wearing a long blue dress and had her hair braided and wound around her head. This place had practically screamed cult.
My eyes rest on one of the fence perimeter guards as he continues his stroll past me, visibly bored as he yawns into his hand.
He has a walkie-talkie stuffed in the straps of a black belt, wears khaki combat-style gear, and has a beard that no military would ever accept.
After waiting to make sure no other guards are close by, I keep low as I creep toward him.
He never sees me coming.
One uppercut to the jaw is all it takes to drop him.
I catch him, fling him over my shoulder, and retrace my steps to the part of the fence I climbed over.
Makhi is muttering curses as he struggles to get over the fence when I whisper, “Look out.”
And I fling the man over.
A loud curse aimed squarely at me follows a pained grunt, and I think I know who my guy just landed on. Grinning, I re-climb the fence and find a furious Makhi shoving the man off him with Nash’s help as he gets to his feet.
“You did that on purpose,” Makhi accuses.
I don’t waste time denying it.
“I said, look out.” Bending, I pick the man up, hiding my smirk from Makhi.
“Was grabbing him like that a good idea?” Nash asks me quietly, glancing toward the fence. “They could punish Byrdie if they notice him missing.”
“We have no choice,” I say, picking the man up to carry him back to my truck that we parked several minutes away. I kept the headlights off so no one in the compound would see us coming. “We need answers, and charging in there guns blazing when we don’t even know if Byrdie is even here isn’t a good idea.”
“That and we don’t have guns to blaze,” Makhi says, opening the back door so I can stuff the unconscious man inside.
“We could have gotten them.” I left the army, but I didn’t leave my family behind. They’re always there for me, at the end of a phone, and I’m always there for them. “Let’s get him somewhere quiet and get those answers, shall we?” I ask once we’re all back in the truck.
I feel Nash watching me, though he doesn’t ask how I intend to get those answers.
Makhi doesn’t ask because he likely knows.
Thirty minutes down the road from the compound, in a quiet, abandoned-looking public bathroom, it takes three hard slaps across the man’s face to wake him.
He comes up fighting.
I sit on his chest, wrench his right arm up, and hold his wrist.
Nash and Makhi are behind me, quietly watching.
